Viva Ecuador

Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let
him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep
using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air
base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for
counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running
routes.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base
in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a
trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil,
surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics
flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of
illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

I'm glad to hear about someone growing a pair and telling the U.S. to play by the same rules as everyone else. Not under threat of force, just under threat of non-cooperation.

Moreover, ceasing to aid the Armed Forces in the grossly immoral and destructive quest of Prohibition is good news on its own.

Before cheering at Correa
http://www.iatp.org/tradeobservatory/headlines.cfm?refID=96647

"We don't have a national currency, we have the dollar," he told Radioprogramas. "If as a result of the agreement, Peru and Colombia have a problem in the external sector, they reduce the currency's value and correct the imbalance. Ecuador can't do that and the consequences could be incalculable."

There would indeed be a risk to Ecuador, the risk that US starts inflating to get all of Ecuador's product for free, but the risk is on exports not imports.

The guy is supposed to have studied economics in Belgium and Illinois University...

A scary quote from one of his american economics teacher:
"He appreciates the market to a certain point, but he knows that the market left alone concentrates wealth"

Hostility to the US is nothing new in Latin America, and it's a cheap way for a politician to gain political points. Hostility to the US is mainly powered by xenophobia, which is a permanent side of humanity but not one to celebrate. The US has its own version directed outwards, so it's not as though the US is any exception to this.

Hey, I'm more that willing to read SA history painting the US as the perpetual good guys. Perhaps you can educate me on why I should begrudge them their hostility to the US. I think idiots like Chavez and Correa are shooting their own countries in the foot but it isn't like we have been complete gentlemen in the region.

Hey, I'm more that willing to read SA history painting the US as the perpetual good guys.

Don't try to pigeonhole me. I didn't say that the US are perpetual good guys. What I said was that the hostility to the US is mainly powered by xenophobia. Every country has its share of good guys and bad guys, but when a local commits a crime against a local, that does not feed into local self-hatred (at least, comparatively little), but when a foreigner commits a crime against a local, that feeds into distrust and even hatred of all his countrymen, and even when locals commit crimes against locals, foreigners are an attractive scapegoat.

Perhaps you can educate me on why I should begrudge them their hostility to the US.

I didn't say we should begrudge it, I only said we ought not to celebrate it. I said it's a permanent side of humanity, so it's hardly something specifically to begrudge. Everyone is xenophobic about everyone else. Everyone has a mixture of distrust, contempt, and so forth for foreigners. Americans are special targets because our physical presence makes the latent xenophobia manifest itself. Jews, Gypsies, Japanese tourists, Mexican illegals, English home buyers in France - everybody sufficiently alien who makes their presence sufficiently felt in a population causes the latent xenophobia of the local population to manifest itself. And Americans are the most omnipresent of all the nationalities. Even if we are not physically present, our products are present.

There are always faults that can be found. One can find things to criticize in Jews, Gypsies, Japanese, Mexicans, English, Americans, and everyone else. It is a mistake to conclude that the hatred of the foreigner is actually caused by those faults. This is not so. Rather, the hatred of the foreigner seeks out the faults that are always there and uses them to inflame itself. In contrast, the love of the foreigner (which also can arise) easily inflames itself with the innumerable special charms that are easily found in any nationality you decide to fall in love with.

What I said was that the hostility to the US is mainly powered by
xenophobia. Every country has its share of good guys and bad guys, but
when a local commits a crime against a local, that does not feed into
local self-hatred (at least, comparatively little), but when a
foreigner commits a crime against a local, that feeds into distrust and
even hatred of all his countrymen, and even when locals commit crimes
against locals, foreigners are an attractive scapegoat.

This doesn't fly. If the Mafia commits a crime against you, you hate the Mafia more. This isn't xenophobia, it's a hatred of folks who violate your rights. By the same lights, the hatred of the US isn't hatred of foreigners, it's hatred of an organization that has repeatedly violated rights in Latin America and interferred where it didn't belong. The hostility to the US is mainly powered by grossly unjust US foreign policy in the region.

By the same lights, the hatred of the US isn't hatred of foreigners,
it's hatred of an organization that has repeatedly violated rights in
Latin America and interferred where it didn't belong.

But I already fully addressed this point. I suppose I need to be more explicit. It seems pretty clear to me that you have scant knowledge of the full extent of the bloody history of Latin America, because if you had some familiarity with it, you would realize that American wrongs against Latin Americans are like nothing compared to the Latin American wrongs against Latin Americans. It is humanity as such that has committed great evils in Latin America, North Americans less so than Latin Americans. Thus, if Latin Americans were fair in whom they hated, they would hate humanity as such. But instead, they single out Americans, who are especially alien to Latin American culture (In contrast, Latin American countries, because of their common language and heritage, have much more in common with each other than typical neighboring countries.)

If you want to look at an example of Latin American evil committed against Latin Americans, pretty much everything that the typical left winger would give as an example of American evil deeds, is, to a much greater extent, an example of Latin American evil deeds. For example, Pinochet. And the stuff we've heard about is small potatoes compared to an even more violent past. The War of the Triple Alliance is one of the greatest bloodbaths in Latin American History, and most North Americans, particularly North Americans who talk as though the US is the great evil without which Latin America would be a paradise, have never heard of it. It had nothing to do with the US (well, there is a connection, but hardly one where the US can be blamed for the bloodbath).

We see a similar phenomenon at work in the conflict between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. There is massive conflict throughout the Middle East. Israel hardly stands alone as the great aggressor. But that is how it is characterized, that is how it is imagined, because if a Shia Muslim murders a Shia Muslim, who is the victim's family going to blame? Shia muslims? But they're Shia Muslims! But if an Israeli Jew murders a Muslim, then it's just one more example of Israeli evil. So man's inhumanity to man is pretty much universal throughout the Middle East, but Israeli Jews are singled out for special opprobrium. Yes, they are not innocent of wrongdoing, but they are not special in this regard. They are special in being Jews.

Another example is Abu Ghraib. What it actually was, was some individuals behaving badly (and then being punished for it). But what it became in the imagination, was American evil, proof that America and Americans are evil. I was tainted by it. All Americans were tainted by it. Meanwhile, massively greater evil is being committed daily throughout the Middle East, and being done with full governmental sanction. But since it is being done by locals to locals, it does not taint the nationality in its own eyes, nor is it loudly aired to the rest of the world.